[APD] 'Tropica' Java fern

["Karen Randall" <krandall at rdrcpa_biz>]

Daphne wrote:

> Thanks for offering the 'Windelov' Chrys but I have it.  I was looking for
> 'Tropica', which  I have never seen other than in pictures.
>
> Thanks for the description Scott , you explained the differences 
> perfectly.
Scott wrote:

> It's nice looking stuff. Wouldn't mind getting some myself
> ;-)
>
> I've had several diff javas but never that one.

Even Tropica no longer actively produces or sells the 'Tropica' cultivar. 
It turned out that after a while, even through only asexual reproduction, 
the plant reverted to very close to the "standard" large Java fern.  I still 
have some in some of my tanks, but at this point you'd be hard-put to see 
the difference.  An OCCASIONAL leaf will throw an OCCASIONAL extention, but 
that's it.  This was not a matter of cultural differences, however.  It took 
a number of years (I'm guessing it was at least 5 or 6 years) for the 
cultivar to slowly revert back to normal form.  Some of us tried hard to 
keep our most dramatic stock and work with it, but it still slowly reverted.

Tropica never knew how the 'Tropica' variety (or the 'Windelov' variety, for 
that matter) developed.  They didn't do it on purpose, but simply found some 
plants growing that way in one of their greenhouses.  So it is possible 
that it was a rare but normal variation of the wild plants.  But they have 
gone back to the area where the stock for those original plants was 
collected, and have been unable to find any more plants like them.

I'm sure lots of us would be thrilled to find someone who was maintaining a 
stable population of that variety, but so far everyone we've talked to who 
kept it in those early days had it revert to the normal type eventually.

Karen 


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